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Last year before heating season, I had a contractor come look at my current Carrier A/C, and we got to talking about my boiler (contractor did heating too). I told him that when no heat is needed, the boiler water temp goes down to room-temp, and it takes alot of gas to fire it up to 180degrees. He said I needed a 3-way valve to aleviate this. Apparently this allows the circulator to circulate the water just thru the water jacket & keep it at 180? Then then when a zone-valve opens, the valve changes position & allows the water into the baseboards.

I was promised that their "plumbing guru" would visit me, but repeated calls failed to find him, so I gave up. Does this sound like what I need, and will it save me any $$ in nat. gas costs by keeping the water in the water jacket at 180degrees?

I have a gas-fired SlantFin (1999), 126,000 BTU I=B=R capacity. Upstairs and downstairs are different zones, two loops for upstairs, and three for downstairs. Taco 007 circulator. Temp is kept at 64degrees during the day downstairs, and the reverse of that for upstairs & my heating bill is still $220/month with ~78% of that going to gas. Sometimes we wear a lite jacket in the house; I can't afford much more per month for heat :-)
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If it was hot all the time you would have much higher standby losses. Many boilers are that way to save on the fuel consumed just sitting there waiting for a call for heat.
The three way valve WILL protect the boiler from cold water returning from the system which could cause some problems in some systems.
A temperature reset is a good way to save fuel in this case. Most of the time you don't need 180*, so the reset only heats the water hot enough to heat the house. Lower water temps = lower fuel consumption. Not to mention some weatherizing for the house.

you boiler was not designed to maintan 180 degrees allthe time. all this will do is run your bill higher and may cause other problems down the road. set up that way it will run even in the warmer months unless you remember to turn it off. it is designed to cool down and heat to 180 when there is a call for heat. it is called on demand.
that many zones on one circulator seems like a lot it might be more worth while to remove the zone valves and instal all pumps one for each zone. or a pump for each flor with zone valves on the pumps.water may not be moveing fast enough to heat up quick enough. see about getting other opinions for other contractors before you do something the unit wasnt designed to do and cost more to operate

the only thing that I would add to this is that if you are turning the temperature up and down through out the day and night on these different levels, it is costing you more money to recover these temperatures than if you maintained one temperature all the time. It takes too long to recover heat with a hot water system.

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the only thing that I would add to this is that if you are turning the temperature up and down through out the day and night on these different levels, it is costing you more money to recover these temperatures than if you maintained one temperature all the time. It takes too long to recover heat with a hot water system.
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Original poster:
I noticed that too, where the furnace would run non-stop for an hour, to move the temp in the house back to the comfortable range, so I locked the temps both upstairs & downstairs, to ~67degrees. Then I paid a $330 utility bill that month :-( I've taken the fronts off of the baseboards & cut the carpet out from underneath for better air-flow; some baseboards had carpet obstructing 80% of the airflow. Also, I have alot of heat loss too; the outside walls in the winter are VERY cold; there must not be alot of insulation in there. Lastly, in the downstairs 2 rooms have less baseboard than they should, when my grandfather built this house in '63, he said, "Oh, I don't want baseboard on that wall, it won't look good next to that fireplace.." So I know I've got other problems as well. (how about a 25X9 room with 18' of baseboard..)

a 3way valve would help the boiler come up to temp quicker. You don't have to maintain 180° but when you call for heat the 3way would divert boiler discharge back to the return until you reach the 180.